A Cool Breeze on the Underground nc-1 Read online

  “If this ever got out-”

  “It won’t.”

  “A friend and I-he doesn’t go to this school-stayed over a few days after the school trip. We got kidding around one night…”

  “Go ahead.”

  “We called one of those services. You know, they have phone numbers in the paper? We called one of them.”

  Neal’s heart bounced. “And they sent a couple of ladies over,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “And did you…”

  “Yeah.”

  “And was one of them Allie Chase?”

  Scott looked shocked. “No! No way! Really!”

  “Okay, okay. I believe you.”

  “After we… we got talking a little, and we asked these girls if they knew where we could get some hash.” This last tidbit came out in a rush and Neal could see the kid relax.

  “Hey, Scott, I’ll bet they knew, huh?”

  “Yeah.” He sort of chuckled. “They called this guy who said to come meet him.”

  “And you went?”

  “I know it sounds dumb, but it was right out in public. Right by this movie theater in Leicester Square. We even knew the place, because we’d seen the new Bond movie there.”

  “Where does Allie come in?”

  “She was with him.”

  “With who? The dealer?”

  “Him and two others. A guy and a girl.”

  “Did you talk to Allie?”

  “No. When she walked up with this guy, she was laughing and all, but then she saw me and she turned away real quick, behind the other girl, and they backed off into the alley.”

  “Scott, are you sure it was her?”

  Scott nodded. “Real sure.”

  “How come?”

  “Allie and I… you know… we’d partied.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “We bought the hash and took off.”

  “Did you try to approach Allie?”

  Scott blushed. “Her friends were pretty punk-looking. I didn’t want to push it.”

  “You were right. You did the right thing.”

  “Anyway, when I got back, I thought I should tell Mrs. Chase, but I didn’t want to-”

  “Tell everything. Sure.”

  “So I made up the story about seeing Allie in the park.”

  “How did Allie look? Okay?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. A little ratty maybe. Sweatshirt and jeans.”

  “Was she stoned?”

  “Yeah, maybe. She was laughing a lot.”

  “What about the dealer? What did he look like?”

  “Cool. Very cool.” Scott smiled.

  Some detectives can deal with “civilians,” others can’t. They get impatient and scream things like, “‘Cool. Very cool.’ What the hell does that mean?” Such detectives love to get clothing-store robberies, because the witnesses are perfect. (“This forty-two long in a cheap maroon blazer, gray polyester slacks, and Buster Browns comes in and

  …”)

  “What was cool about him?”

  “He had real short hair and was wearing a double-breasted suit with a T-shirt! He was real slick with the money and the dope, like it was all a big joke, like he was selling hot dogs, or something.”

  “Big guy? Little?”

  “About your size. Bigger-boned.”

  “If he plays football, what position is he?”

  “Halfback, maybe a small tight end.”

  “Did he have a name?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, he had three safety pins stuck through his ear.”

  I’m glad you brought that up, Scott. That might just help identify him. “Three safety pins?”

  “Yeah,” answered Scott with unmixed admiration.

  “What about the girls? You remember their names?”

  “Ginger and Yvonne.”

  Swell.

  “The name of the service you called?”

  “Sorry.”

  “C’mon. You do this a lot?”

  “No! We were drunk! You know.”

  “How about the hotel?”

  “The Piccadilly Hotel.”

  Never ask a witness more than two questions in a row he can’t answer. Make sure you pitch him a watermelon every once in a while. Builds his confidence. The Gospel According to St. Joseph. Graham.

  “Did the two hookers seem to know Allie? They say hi or anything?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did the dealer say anything to her?”

  “No. Not a word.”

  “Anything else you remember or you want to tell me?” “It was kind of a blur. You know?” Neal nodded. He knew.

  “Thanks, Scott,” he said, going through the ritual “You’ve been a big help.” “Can I go?”

  “Hey, you have an exam tomorrow.” Scott started to slide out of the booth.

  “One more thing,” Neal said, realizing he was doing a Columbo imitation. “The hash, how was it?”

  Jack Armstrong Ail-American Boy grinned. “Primo.”

  Neal‘s motel room was nothing special, but it had the essentials-a bed with a rationally placed reading light, a phone within easy reach, and a color TV that brought in the Yankees game. It also had clean glasses. Neal was feeling semicivilized, so he used one of them to belt down three slugs of scotch before dialing the phone.

  Ed Levine answered after seven rings. He said hello with the voice of a man who doesn’t like being called at home.

  “Ed?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Keep your fat fingers off my fucking case.”

  Neal hung up the phone and sat back in bed as Guidry smoked another Angel. Maybe, he thought, maybe he could find the aptly named Alison Chase if she was still with this dealer.

  The dealer was a pro, no question. He had good technique and some connections. He screened his first-time customers coming in and did small-time courtesy deals for business connections. And if he had turned Allie on, he hadn’t turned her over-yet. Definitely a yet, because a businessman doesn’t waste a commodity as valuable as a beautiful young girl. Unless he really loves her, then it will take a little longer.

  So there was a place to start. Find the dealer and you have a shot at finding Allie. A long shot, indeed, but you’ve seen them hit before.

  Just to encourage him, Guidry threw a curve that didn’t, which the batter pulled right and put over the fence as the base runner trotted contemptuously home.

  Neal consoled himself with chapter seven of The Making of the English Working Class and another scotch.

  Neal spent a very boring day and a half waiting for the FedEx package from Graham to arrive. He killed time with chapters eight through fifteen, Travis McGee, and Mr. Ed reruns. The desk rang him when the package came.

  In it were three Xeroxed pages from a rag called the London Daily Leveller. the classified ads for May 7, the night that Scott Mackensen and his friend had let their fingers do the walking. Most of the ads were of the “for a good time, call” variety, but there were a number of specialty acts: mother/daughter teams, B amp;D mistresses (“Imelda knows you’ve been a bad boy”), a wide world of ethnic specialties (Neal wondered what a “full treatment Bulgarian hour” could possibly entail). There were bad little girls who wanted to be spanked first, some who wanted to be spanked afterward. Many had cute names. There were three Bambis, but to Neal’s intense relief, no Thumpers. A goodly number had French names, and not a few had threatening ones. Neal thought that any man dumb enough to call up a woman named Stiletto and invite her into his room deserved whatever he got.

  There were also a lot of agency listings. Most used sophisticated names like Erotica and Exotica, and Neal yearned for an agency of frigid hookers called Antarctica. His personal favorite, though, was Around The World In Eighty Minutes. Of course, there was no listing for “Ginger and Yvonne: Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll,” because nobody ever got that lucky.

  “You s
aid last time was it,” Scott Mackensen protested over the phone.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Will this really help Allie?”

  “Could.”

  There ensued one of those long, irritating silences Neal was getting used to on this gig. And not a grape in sight. He settled for a bite of his Hershey bar-the healthy kind, the one with almonds.

  “I have a test tomorrow,” Scott said.

  I know the feeling, kid. “On what?”

  “Macbeth.” He sounded mournful.

  “I’ll help you with it. I’ve taken a few exams on Macbeth myself.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. The witches did it.”

  Scott stared at the ads laid out on the counter in Neal’s motel room. He moved his index finger slowly down the page, then shook his head.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Try again.”

  “I can’t remember!”

  “Jesus Christ! How many call girls have you been with?”

  “I was drunk!”

  Attaboy, Neal, he told himself, browbeat a witness who’s really trying. That’ll help.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re both tired. Try it this way. In your hotel room in London, where was the phone?”

  Scott pointed to a spot on the counter. Neal moved the phone there and put a chair in front of it.

  “Okay,” he said. “Sit down. Where was the paper? Okay. Which hand do you dial with? Good. Now look at the paper. Don’t think. Just point.”

  “Somewhere around here,” Scott said, pointing toward the lower third of the first page.

  “Good. Now was it the name of an agency, or just a couple of girls?”

  “Just girls.”

  “Good.”

  Good, not great. But it was progress. Something to work from.

  Scott sank back in his chair and let out a long sigh. He was an exhausted kid. He looked at Neal and smiled.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” he said.

  Neal went for the brass ring.

  “Hey, Scott. Did you take any pictures of these girls?”

  Neal watched the kid’s spine stiffen.

  “You mean dirty pictures?”

  “No, I mean you tell your friends what you did and they say ‘Bullshit,’ and you whip out a couple of Polaroids of the girls.”

  Scott looked him right in the eye and told him the God’s honest truth.

  “No way.”

  “Just a thought. When’s your test?”

  “First period.”

  Neal whipped through a few of the big themes in the old Scottish play, discoursed on how many times the word man was used, and for extra credit threw in a few notes on the uses of color in the imagery. Then he sent Scott on his way and phoned Joe Graham.

  Neal was at scott’s school bright and early, first period. The kid’s dorm-room door was a breeze, one of those spring-bolt locks that yodel, “Come on in, pardner.”

  The room was your typical boys’ school hovel with a sort of dirty laundry Cristo effect. Neal found Scott’s desk and went straight to the top right drawer, the locked one. It was a little less friendly than the door lock, but opened up after a little persuasion.

  The usual collection of bullshit was in there. A bunch of letters from a girl named Marsha, another bunch from a Debbie. Lots of pictures: Marsha or Debbie with Scott on a beach; Marsha or Debbie with Scott at a dance; just Marsha or Debbie on a boat; just Scott on the boat, taken by Marsha or Debbie; Marsha or Debbie posed romantically under a willow tree. Neal didn’t see any of Marsha and Debbie pounding the crap out of Scott. He leafed through a couple of Penthouse magazines, a passport, and a brochure on Brown University before he came to a thin packet of pictures secured by a rubber band. Bingo. Scott and a friend with arms around two girls who were neither Marsha nor Debbie-in a hotel room. Hello, Ginger. Greetings, Yvonne.

  Neal took the best picture and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He locked the desk drawer and walked out of the room, whistling a happy tune, wondering how Scott was doing in class.

  Joe Graham, listening from the stairway, heard the whistling and left by a side door.

  They met in the parking lot of the post office. Neal slid into the passenger seat of Graham’s car.

  “So what do you have so important I have to come to Connecticut to hold your hand for?”

  “I have Allie hooked up to a dealer, name unknown, naturally, who has friends in the ‘love for rent’ business. I have two working girls, names unknown, naturally, but narrowed down to about twelve phone numbers, who know the aforementioned dealer. I have skit.”

  “You’re doing okay.”

  “Yeah, right. Do you want to lay the odds on our finding Allie Chase in London?”

  “About the same as Jackie O peeling my banana at Lincoln Center.”

  Neal laid the photo on the dashboard.

  “Visual aids, very nice,” Graham said.

  “I’ve been thinking about something.”

  “Hard to believe.”

  “Allie Chase ran before.”

  “So?”

  “Twice to New York.”

  Graham pretended to study the picture.

  “If I’d have picked her up, I would have told you about it,” he said.

  “So you didn’t, and I didn’t, and-”

  “There’s nothing about it in the file.”

  “At least not in the file we’ve seen.”

  Graham perused the picture some more. “Nice-looking girls.”

  “What’s going on, Dad?”

  “Son, I don’t know.”

  I hope you don’t, Dad. Goddamn, I hope you don’t.

  6

  A few weeks and a few jobs after Neal had started working for Graham, he answered a knock on the door, to find the gremlin standing there, his arms full of packages and a brand-new mop and broom clutched in one hand.

  “What’s this?” Neal asked.

  “I’m fine, thank you. How are you? Your mother home?”

  “Not lately.”

  Graham brushed him aside and stepped in.

  “You live in a toilet. A toilet.”

  “It’s the maid’s year off.”

  Graham swept off some garbage from the kitchen counter and set the packages down. “We’re going to fix that.”

  “You buy me this stuff?”

  “No, you bought you this stuff. I took it out of your pay for the last job.”

  “You better be kidding me, man.”

  “This,” said Graham with an appropriate flourish, “is a mop. You use it to clean floors.”

  “Just give me the money.”

  “This is a broom. You also use it to clean floors,” Graham said, looking around, “although maybe I should have brought some dynamite.”

  That morning, Neal discovered that Graham was a first-class neatnik, a psychopathic cleaner of the highest order. Out of the bags came sponges, dishrags, dish towels, Brillo pads, bug spray, disinfectant, lemon oil, Windex, paper towels, detergent, Comet cleanser (“The best, don’t let anybody kid you.”), toilet-bowl cleaner, and a package of bright yellow rubber gloves.

  “I like things to be neat and clean,” Graham explained, “at work, and at home.”

  They cleaned. They crammed months of accumulated trash into plastic garbage bags and carried it downstairs. Then they swept-like your mother never did. (“The broom’s not going to get everything, you see, so you have to get down on your hands and knees with this brush, and use the dustpan.”) Then they mopped, with Graham showing Neal not only the correct ratio of cleanser to water but also the proper way to swing the mop “so you’re not just shoving the dirt around.” This was followed by scrubbing, waxing, polishing, disinfecting, and scraping until Neal Carey was tired, irritable, aching, sore, and living in an immaculate apartment.

  “And how long you think it’s gonna stay this way once my mother gets home?” Neal demanded.

  “You keep it this way. Another thing
, you eat like shit.”

  “I eat okay.”

  “Candy bars, Sugar Pops-”

  “I like candy bars and Sugar Pops.”

  “There’s another bag in the hall. Get it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Neal returned with the bag and asked, “What is all this stuff?”

  Graham removed the contents. “A frying pan, a pot, a pot holder, two plates, two forks, two spoons, two knives, one can opener-”

  “I got a can opener.”

  “A spatula, eggs, bread, butter, Dinty Moore beef stew, a jar of peanut butter, a jar of grape jelly, some spaghetti… these things are called vegetables, you will learn to like them-”

  “No way.”

  “Or I will break your face. I will bring more next week. Every Thursday, we are going to have a cooking lesson.”

  “You’re talking ‘we,’ you better bring a friend.”

  “Or you’re fired. You think you’re the only underage, undersized sneak thief in New York?”

  “Not the only, just the best.”

  “Then you had better get yourself some pride, kid. Because you live like an animal. Your mother doesn’t take care of you, so you’d better learn to take care of yourself. Or you can’t work for me.”

  He worked. And learned. Easy stuff at first, like tailing someone from a distance; how to keep an eye on the guy without looking as if he was looking.

  “First thing you look at are the shoes, Neal, the shoes,” Graham told him during one of the many sidewalk lectures. “Two reasons. One, you can always spot him in a crowd. Two, the guy turns around and spots you, you’re looking down, not right into his baby blues.”

  They practiced that for a week, Neal following Graham down Broadway, on the subway, on the bus, down crowded streets, down nearly empty ones. One day tailing Graham east on Fifty-seventh, Neal was concentrating so hard on Graham’s shoes, he bumped right into his back.

  “Now, why did that happen?” Graham asked him.

  “I dunno.”

  “Good answer. Exactly. You don’t know. The pace, Neal, you have to watch the pace. Everybody has a different stride-long, short, slow, fast… I shortened my steps. I kept walking just as fast, but I shortened my stride. I took smaller steps. I made you bump into me. The first block or so you’re tailing, measure the guy’s step against the cracks in the sidewalk. What is it? Step, step and a half to each crack? Count it off. Is it slow or fast? It’s like music, so sing to yourself if you have to. Keep time.